Inspirational Awakening

Reputation is everything. Surprisingly, an eggshell can instruct us how to protect our reputation. Really? Yes it can.

Chickens are everyday livestock in the farmstead. The Farmer placed the hencoop in the backyard of his house. There were seven hens producing eggs. At one particular afternoon, The Farmer asked me to take an egg from its nest. And when I returned back to him with the egg in my hand, I found him holding a sharp needle.

“Please assure that thou can remember this egg!” said The Farmer as great as taking that chicken’s egg from my hand. And lifted it rather high till it position as high as my eyes.

“What will you do?” I enquired.

“Watch this,”

Then he jabbed of the egg with the needle. Slow and tender. I understood that he did not wish that eggshell to be destroyed or broke hence.

“Why are you doing that?” I insisted on.

“Thou will understand. Just be patience and wait,” The Farmer said.

Afterwards, The Farmer returned the egg back to me. I checked it precisely on the place where the small needle jabbed. Nothing I found but a very small dot of the sharp needle on the surface of the eggshell.

“Make sure thou can remember this egg!” The Farmer repeated his word. “I don’t think so,“ my word. ”For me, all the chicken eggs just seen to be the same.”

“Just wait. And thou will understand….” He reciprocated, “Now return this egg back to the den. ” I can do nothing but listened to and obeyed his word.

In the next three days, The Farmer preceded and asked me to take the egg back to him. “That is impossible, Sir, “ I evaded. “For me, all the eggs are seen to be the same. What if I take a wrong egg?”

”Just try!” he said. He forced me to do it anyway. So that I didn’t have any choice but went to the nest.

When a few moment later I returned back with an egg on my right hand, whereas my left hand closed my nose, The Farmer enquired: ”What an easy task, isn’t it?”

“I do not know, whether this is the right egg,” I replied.

“Surely the egg, Son”

“How can you be so confident?”

“Because, this is the egg we jabbed its shell three days ago,”

Do you know, why the egg with a damage shell will immediately become a rotten egg and reek? You are correct. Because, the eggshell function is to protect the entire substance inside it. The Farmer told me that the eggshell is similar to what we call as integrity. It has equal function with ‘your integrity’, which is taking care of your reputation.

In modern business life of urban, you will only become a good executive and remain to be good, if you are able to take care of your integrity. Because, once you smirch your integrity, sooner or later people around you will smell it. Your reputation will be damaged, then. Through that egg, The Farmer taught me that our integrity protects our reputation as the eggshell does to the egg substance. The substance inside the egg is a symbol referring to your reputation.

Once you hurt your own integrity no matter how mild or severe it is, then it would be damaged. And it shall no longer protect your reputation. And like the egg we mentioned, once your reputation not to be protected by the shell of your integrity, sooner or later, you would become like such decaying egg. Stain. And Smell. And finally must be put aside from your community. And lose all the opportunities you should get. And then everything turns in to nothing.

It is no wonder if you oftentimes found a very bright person who is surprisingly lost his career by one wrong step. So that his integrity shell is broken, then destroy all the means he has built for years in his career life. In real life, you possibly have met someone who was very bright. And owned very high technical ability in his work place. But, this person has never been promoted for any important position just because his unfavorable integrity. No matter how good you are, with such bad integrity, you will not yield a ‘delicious omelet’. And only with a good integrity, you can enjoy its delicacy you wish in business or career, as well as in your personal life. There is only one way for you to assure that your reputation remains to be protected, which is to ensure that your integrity shell remains to be intact in place. Do not let it damage even for a very small wound. Though very skinny, the eggshell is a very important element to ascertain the egg entirety remains to be good.

That applies also to your integrity shell. It becomes a very important building block to take care off and ascertain your reputation to remain to be good too. Either in your colleague’s eyes. Your superior’s eyes. Your customer’s eyes. And last but not least, in the eyes of your own. Why? Because the first one to know whether you have a good integrity or not is: you.

You, yourself.

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